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29 January 2012

Redefining Patriotism

This article first appeared in the 3rd issue of the Africa Youth Human Rights Network's e-magazine; These Are Our Rights, February 2011.

It is being called the jasmine revolution and has sent
shockwaves throughout the world both for its intense rapidity which not only
took Tunisia but the whole continent by surprise but also its dramatic and
almost fairy-tale like ending: a dictator packing his bags and making a very
undignified exit to the nearest country that would take him.

Unlike the many articles that have flooded the news
agencies, the blogosphere and Facebook I really do not want to debate the
rights or wrongs that have been set in motion by this latest example of people
power. I have my own doubts as to what the future holds but I am content to sit
back and see what that is. Instead I would like to go back into the past with
you. I would like to let us reflect for a moment on the name Mohamed Bouazizi.
Perhaps in the frenzy of the revolution the international community may have
forgotten his name but that name in Tunisia now stands for the hero who started
a revolution when he gave his life for his country.

It all started with a slap and an insult, it ended with the
most dramatic revolution this year and certainly one of the most dramatic in
recent history. Mohamed Bouazizi is at the centre of the entire furore. A young
man slapped in the face by a police officer, jobless despite the fact that completed his baccalaureate, selling vegetable to make ends meet despite the fact
that his country is one of the richest in the region. No country should be
allowed to sit back and watch any of its citizens in such a state but for
Mohamed, not only did his motherland sit back and watch from their gleaming
villas along the Mediterranean but the states representative in the form of a
police officer slapped him in the face and insulted his father who died when he
was three.

The rest of the story should be familiar, after taking his
complaint to the local governor who would not open their offices to him; he
doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire. In doing so he set on fire
the regime of President of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, set on fire the spirits of
his fellow countrymen who had suffered in the same conditions as he had for the
last twenty three years and changed the course of Tunisian history forever. And
that is the crux of all this reflection, the fact that at the very centre of
this story is someone, a single person, who decided to do something, a great
action, to change things. And not only did his countrymen take heed and listen
to his unspoken message but they all went out and declared enough is enough.

What does one define patriotism as? Is it that feeling that
courses through ones blood as one gazes at the flag fluttering in the morning
breeze? Is it the pride one feels when gazing admiringly at a label that says
made in your country? Or is it the undying conviction that every single square
inch of your homeland is you homeland and that no one, not any one, can ever
take that away from you? Is it the brave spirit that runs down the street in
the face of a flood of bullets as South African school children did in Soweto,
or sits silently in jail as Nelson Mandela did on Robben Island, or face a tank
in the middle of Tiananmen Square and say, “I will not move!” as that famous
and sadly unnamed Chinese man did twenty years ago. Or is it defined by Mohamed Bouazizi’s final act
that screamed, “I would rather die than live one more day oppressed by this
regime.”

A great man once said that those who sit and allow tyranny
to reign are active participants in that tyranny and as I look at the world map
and see all the worlds “trouble spots” I cannot help but feel that those words
ring truer now than ever before. We can blame world leaders all we want, but as
the Ndebele tribe of Southern Africa say, a king is a king because of his
people. Defining patriotism is a difficult thing but I can dare say that
Mohamed Bouazizi came closer than a lot of people have done ever since NathanHale declared before he was executed as an American spy by the British, “I only
regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

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About Me

Why echoes of my voice? I actually don't know. As to what I am going to write about? I have no idea either. Expect sudden thoughts that erupt from my mind, uncensored and blemished as they are by the harsh bias of my opinion. I apologize in advance if I offend your sensibilities but that's what they are there for, to be offended. Defend them in the comments section (politeness is always welcome) and lets see what we come up with. I'm a normal person who's lived a normal life in a world that persistently refuses to be normal.